Ofcom review industry code on under-18 access to adult content on mobiles…

Pretty interesting report here.

First Ofcom praise the overall effort behind the code:

‘Overall, we find the Code to be effective in restricting young people’s access to inappropriate content and a good example of industry self-regulation. Based on interviews with operators and stakeholders, we believe that the Code and Framework are understood and readily adopted by all concerned.’

But then find there is room for improvement:

‘We find that the availability of consumer information about how to restrict access to 18-rated material is generally poor – only 15% of adults who use a mobile and who have a child in their household are aware of age verification systems.’

‘[T]his Review requested information about the numbers of complaints regarding child access to 18-rated material from mobile operators. The mobile operators were unable to supply reliable complaint data in this regard.’

‘To ensure transparency and confidence of operation, we recommend that the IMCB undertakes to publishes annual reports and minutes of board meetings on the IMCB website.’

‘This review did not evaluate the efficiency of the mobile operators’ filtering technology. We recommend that to maintain confidence in the application of the Code and Framework, the industry considers periodic, independent evaluation, both of mobile commercial content rating and of mobile internet content filtering. We recommend that the IMCB commissions these audits and publishes the findings on its website.’

‘[M]obile operators may need to consider if a binary system at 18 provides sufficient protection from inappropriate content for younger users, or whether a more granular system should be considered.’

* * *

Good for Ofcom to attempt to make the self-regulatory scheme function better for consumers.

It makes you wonder, though, whether self-regulation really exists. In this case, there is such significant guidance and prodding from Ofcom and other entities this seems more like co-regulation than self-regulation. In the end, it doesn’t really matter that much — except for one issue. The costs of self regulation and co-regulatory schemes are often obscured. We all know Ofcom’s budget and the costs of regulation for the media and communications sector, but increasingly the use of alternatives to traditional regulation make it much harder to uncover the true burden of regulation.

Every year Ofcom seem to manage to shrink the costs of regulation but increasingly many of what would otherwise be the regulator’s tasks are performed by industry bodies. So the costs are not disappearing, they are just being shifted around and obscured to some degree.

And I suppose it is also a form of de-converged regulation!